The Mountain of Flames in Turpan City, China, known for having the coolest name for a mountain in existence, has a new distinction to add to its credentials: home for the rare long-eared Jerboa.

The long-eared Jerboa (Euchoreutes naso) is a nocturnal rodent that is so unique, it has its own genus (Euchoreutes) and subfamily (Euchoreutinae). It possess disproportionately long legs to hop…

Cellphones In Your Shoes

Now you can receive your calls from your shoe. An Australian scientist has developed the first ever shoe cell phone along with a step by step instruction online.

The cell phone has practical applications like helping the elders, says Paul Gardner-Stephen, the inventor, to the the Sydney Morning Herald.

The gadget was created by Gardner-Stephen, a post-doctoral fellow in bioinformatics at Adelaide’’s Flinders University. He first created the device as a prop for a church camp drama presentation that had a "Get Smart" theme.

Gardner set himself a challenge to create the next latest gadget, the shoe-phone’, after he discovered…

This is an ad for a camera all shot in stop motion, but pretty neat.  Which picture are you in now?

Lunch in Malawi: Salted field mice on a stick

LILONGWE, Malawi — Cooked, salted or dried, field mice strung on sticks are sold as a popular delicacy in Malawi markets and roadside stalls.

The mice are hunted in corn fields after the harvest when they have grown plump on a diet of grains, fruits, grass and the odd insect. The most widely eaten species is known locally as Kapuku, gray in color and with a shorter tail than the more common rat.

Young boys have to be quick as they chase the mice through the fields and catch them. But local villagers have also come up with an innovative trap.

One method involves digging holes and putting clay pots filled with water into them. The mouth of the pot is smeared with fried corn husks. As some of the mice fight for the husks, they fall into the pot and drown.

Malawi, with a population of 12 million, is among the poorest countries in the world, with rampant disease and hunger, aggravated by periodic droughts and crop failure.

Original article

 Irish Isle, Middletown, VA, USSA

Great food and atmosphere and if you’ve never been there you should go soon.

It’s about an hour from home for us but well worth the trip for some REAL Irish dishes.

The owner, Brian Coughlan and his guitar share traditional Irish, Scottish, English and American folk songs several nights per week. Brian began performing in Ireland in the 1960’s, moved to America with his band in 1972, and shared traditional music in pubs across the United States, Canada and Europe for 30 years.

Live music 5 nights a week!  Music starts around 7:30 Tuesday-Saturday.

Check the menu out.

Well OK, Robin with me, the top down on the Mustang all day and a great cigar.  And I had all those today.  What a great day!!!

Sorry you couldn’t have come along to enjoy it to.

Notice the southern beginning of Massanutten Mountains diagonally left at the top of the sign and the Alleghenies are hazy to the left of it.

Sorry for the poor pic from my phone but hey, a BlackBerry is really for email and calls.

What a hoot!  Why doesn’t Redmond put this stuff on TV. I know it is supposed to be for an online ad campaign but this would even put Apple to shame.

This guy (supposedly Thomas Paine) has some interesting points and suggestions.

Interesting, very interesting.

By John Rogers, Associated Press

Los Angeles (AP) – Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, who stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy when she expressed her opinion that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry, got the word from pageant poobah Donald Trump on Wednesday: "You’re fired."

Trump and other pageant leaders said Prejean was being sacked not because of her controversial remarks but because she hadn’t been holding up her end of the agreement she signed when she entered the pageant.

"This was a decision based solely on contract violations, including Ms. Prejean’s unwillingness to make appearances on behalf of the Miss California USA organization," the California pageant’s executive director, Keith Lewis, said in a statement.

Lewis had complained at a news conference last month that Prejean was skipping Miss California USA events while speaking out against gay marriage at unsanctioned appearances.

There are two sides to every story though?

 
The English language, which has more words than any other language in the history of the world, today added its one millionth word or phrase, according to the site Global Language Monitor. Several phrases were in the running, including “Jai Ho,” “Slumdog,” (terms popularized by the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire) and “N00b,” a derogatory name for an amateur video-game player.

But the winner was “Web 2.0,” a phrase usually applied to social networking sites such as Facebook, and Twitter. (The Global Language Monitor, somewhat stiffly, calls “[Web 2.0] a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services. It has crossed from technical jargon into far wider circulation in the last six months.”) Since 2008, the Global Language Monitor, which is based in Texas, has been counting down its “Million Word March.”

According to the site, a new English word or phrase is created about every 98 minutes, for an average of…

[Not to be picky but wouldn’t “Web 2.0” be the 1,000,000 & 1,000,001?]